Help Please! Can't unzip vacations pics

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My MacBook can't unzip the zip file so I tried StuffIt Expander & MacZip & they didn't work either. Only WinZip Mac has given me some kind of explanation why it won't work but I don't know what it means or what to do about it. I'm hoping someone here on the forum can provide me some much needed help.
Here's the explanation it gives: "Fatal error: End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not a Zip file, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part Zip file."
Can someone please help me unzip my pics?
Thanks in advance,
Chuck
 

RavingMac

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16Gb Mac Mini 2018, 15" MacBook Pro 2012 1 TB SSD
Where and how did you originally Zip them?
 
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chas_m

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Oh, if you'd said that in first place ...

Anyway, the zip file is corrupt. I doubt you'll be able to recover that. Sorry.
 
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chas_m

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You know, I can't believe I didn't mention it in my last post, but if you still have the camera card and haven't put NEW photos over the old ones there's a good chance the old ones can be retrieved with card recovery software.
 
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Thats not possible, those pics were taken years ago. The file was originally on my MacBook, then I compressed it & transferred it onto iDisk thinking my pics were safe from being accidentally destroyed if something should happen to my laptop (ironic, isn't it?). I have no idea how or why the file got damaged....very frustrating!
Thanks for your help though, I appreciate it.
 
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Way... way too many specs to list.
iDisk? Probably dropped a packet during the upload, or download. Did you try redownloading the zip file?
 
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No, it still didn't work. "There was a problem while reading the contents of the file "Vacations.zip": Unknown error

GGRRRRRR!!!!!!!!
 

RavingMac

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I am assuming the transfer from your MacBook was some time ago as well. If it was fairly recent it would still be reasonably possible to recover at least some of your photos.
Providing you still have the computer.
 
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Yeah, I still have the computer but I transferred the file to iDisk when I was still using Leopard...a little while ago :Smirk:
Do you think it's an OS problem now that I'm using Lion?
 

RavingMac

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With that much time and doing an OS upgrade there probably isn't much hope. Just deleting a file doesn't get rid of it, so running file recovery software will often return most deleted pictures if they haven't been over written.

You can try using a file recovery package, but your chances don't look good. Still, may be worth a try depending on how important the pics are to you.
 
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I still have the compressed file containing the pics on iDisk so I can download it as many times as I want. The problem is that it won't extract properly.
It's not even a matter of looking at the pics anymore, I just want to do it now 'cuz the computer say I can't!!! :Shouting:
 
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Archive recover...

Hi,

I found this thread by curiosity and discovered a solution to recover an archive...

1) Copy archive to desktop.
2) Open terminal.
3) Type this without quotes "zip -FF ~/desktop/archive-name.zip --out ~/desktop/archive-new.zip".
4) Is this a single-disk archive? (y/n): y (answering y).
5) Your new archive is created on the desktop.
6) In case the name is no coherent. Add .zip to produced file.
7) Uncompress new archive.

Step 1 is crucial...
===========================

Best regards
 
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Hi,

I found this thread by curiosity and discovered a solution to recover an archive...

1) Copy archive to desktop.
2) Open terminal.
3) Type this without quotes "zip -FF ~/desktop/archive-name.zip --out ~/desktop/archive-new.zip".
4) Is this a single-disk archive? (y/n): y (answering y).
5) Your new archive is created on the desktop.
6) In case the name is no coherent. Add .zip to produced file.
7) Uncompress new archive.

Step 1 is crucial...
===========================

Best regards

I joined this forum just to thank you for this. Was having the exact same issue/error explanation as the OP with a rather large file it would have really sucked to lose. Nothing worked until this. I'm not the most computer savvy either, so it took some playing around in terminal to get it right.

Over-simplified explanation: I had the .zip file on my desktop already. Opened Terminal and typed: zip -FF "filename" --out "newfilename". "Filename" is obviously the name of the .zip you're having issues with - just drag the .zip from your desktop right to terminal and it'll type it for you. For the "newfilename" put whatever you want the new .zip folder to be called, it can be anything with no spaces. Hit enter and Terminal will try to extract and fix the damaged file(s). That's all it takes! It plopped my new folder down in a weird location for some reason, though, not desktop or the original file location but just under my name in "Users". I don't even know how to navigate to that in Finder on my Mac, personally, so I had to search for the file name. The new folder extracted and worked perfectly as soon as I found it and everything was still there! Hope this helps.

P.S. I know I over explained here, but maybe someone who's not tech savvy at all will stumble on this someday and appreciate it. Thanks again to the last poster for this trick!
 

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Nice feedback jrb...
 

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